Musings about games, religion, politics, and other forms of entertainment.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Why so many Warcraft pickup group players are bad

I hate to indulge in another World of Warcraft post, but I don't have a separate gaming blog. Maybe I should start one, but I'm already stretched thin across three blogs, so it's going here. For you non-gamers, feel free to skip this post, unless it captures your interest. It's got some philosophical bits about teamwork and interpersonal relationships, so there's that.

I like patch 3.3, which introduced the ability to join random groups across multiple servers. Running instances is a lot quicker in general, and especially quick if you happen to be a tank, which I am. (Here's Vinpricent, level 80 protection paladin.) Lining up for a PUG (pickup group) takes about 20 minutes or so if you're a damage dealer, five minutes or less if you're a healer, and two seconds if you're a tank. I have at least one of each at various levels, so I've seen this difference frequently. It's because tanking is a more demanding and stressful role that most players do not like, but it's a ton of fun when done competently.

At least half of the PUGs I join have competent and friendly players, run smoothly, and are a pleasure to play. But I encounter bad PUGgers pretty regularly, and I think I've identified a common theme.

Many of these people are highly skilled as individual players, but they have a play style which does not tolerate any less than perfection from anyone else in the group. Everyone is assumed to be a flawless player, and if they fall short of this ideal, it is always the team's fault and not theirs.

Anecdote 1: The super damage dealer

I am training up a friend who is new to the game. He started a paladin of his own, so I encouraged him to try tanking. I was playing a low level mage with him.

We grouped with a low level hunter who was loaded to the hilt with heirlooms. I'm a pretty capable DPS ordinarily, but this guy is outpacing me by about 3-1 according to Recount. This is a big problem for an inexperienced tank, who cannot hope to keep with that much threat. Monsters are attacking him constantly. To add to the annoyance, this is another one of those guys who will race ahead and attack more groups first, if the tank is not moving fast enough for his needs.

I say "Look, dude, you have great DPS, but our tank is inexperienced and you need to let him establish threat a little more." He responds by saying that he ALWAYS beats everyone in DPS, and it's never a problem. He also does not want to turn off Growl on his pet, since he knows his pet will need to keep monsters off of HIM.

This is actually the most frequent kind of bad player I see. Some DPS players believe that maximizing damage is their only job, and they don't notice or don't care when their personal style is hurting the team.

I'm tanking Prince Keleseth, a boss who freezes random players in ice tombs, making them take damage and preventing actions. Ordinarily the DPS should attack the tomb and break it. Unfortunately, the healer gets entombed, and nobody helps him. We have solid DPS and I can survive well, so we survive, but the healer dies moments before the encounter ends. There is no wipe.

He starts cursing and yelling that it's MY fault (bear in mind that he was nowhere near me when he got entombed). He demands the shard I won as "payment" for letting him die. I give it to him, not wanting to jeopardize the run over his tantrum. As the encounter goes on, he starts barking instructions and acting frustrated when they are not followed, even though we move through at a fairly rapid clip with no other deaths.

Finally, another player and I shut him up. I say "Listen, chill out or quit the group. I'm a tank, I can have another group in 3 seconds. You died once, it is not worth the emotional response you're giving." He says that when he's done he'll go back and play with his top tier guild, whose members are much better than me. Finally I say "Yeah, but you'll still be a big whiner." As we approach the final boss I tell our shadow priest out loud: "Please be ready to off-heal in case he rage-quits in the middle." He doesn't quit.

Anecdote 3: The lunatic

Another healer here, the instant the instance is entered he starts saying "Start chain pulling, this is too easy for me." Gamely I start establishing aggro on a group at a time, moving ahead before a group is fully beaten. He keeps saying "Full mana! I'm bored! PULL FASTER!"

So I pull faster. When there are too many mobs on us already, the group gets feared, pulling even more. I can't get enough aggro, the healer is too far away to be useful. Wipe. I feel stupid for listening to him.

The thing is, even if you have skills which work effectively with perfect groups -- high DPS, big mana pool for healing, the ability to chain-pull as a tank without regard for how well your healer is keeping up -- stuff happens. Patrols hit you, healers go OOM, the tank can't pull the mobs back from your overpowered leather-armor-wearing jerk butt. And when unexpected things happen, if you were playing to the point where you were just barely not dying, that will quickly change from "only mostly dead" to "all dead" pretty quick.

That's why I'm a conservative player no matter what role I'm in. I don't pull more than we can handle; I let my healer mana stay near the full end and don't complain; I watch Omen and switch targets or STOP dealing damage if we have a weak tank.

I just can't believe that so many players have a hard time comprehending the fact that if you have a play style which increases the likelihood of a wipe, you will progress MORE slowly than a group that is cautious and survives.

14 comments:

I played EQ and EQ2 for a few years. I totally understand where you're coming from.

Have you ever purposefully pulled too much just to see how well your group can handle the pressure? I used to do that all the time just to test the team. It's really the only way to play these games and have fun. Otherwise what's the point in doing it if you know you're going to win? Now, I'm not saying that this is something that I'd do in just any PUG but only after a bit of crawling.

Anyhow, thanks for the post. It's nice to mix up some WoW with my Atheism fix.

I'm new to WOW (less than three months) but I got hooked right away and the new PUG system kept me from quiting. I've been leveling a tank (lvl 63) and a healer (lvl 22) through the dungeon finder as well as daily runs with at least two other dps toons. I love listening to stories about bad runs but the truth is, I've had maybe 5 really bad runs out of probably 100 and I can only think of one caused by arrogance. The rest were more ignorance. Maybe it's the level I am playing but I just don't wanna see people turned off by the system when it's quite possibly the most fun I've ever had playing a video game.

Ok, so bad things happen if you forget some enemies can fear or something like that but doing instances day in and day out is boring! When I was playing back in BC days, if I was in a group that can handle a run easily (or sometimes even if I wasn't) I would do things that might be considered dangerous, within reason of course, because I've just been through those places too many times.BTW, if you ever feel bored with wow, try installing the spanish language pack and running a few instances with that on. I always got a kick out of hearing the NPCs speaking spanish and showing how the loot could be linked in spanish form. The only downside is that your macros no longer work (/cast spellname macros) and it becomes hard to tell what the loot is and if you need it.Also, I always wondered about pets and growl.. Doesn't it only serve to be neutral to the team if the pet pulls aggro, dies, and then aggro returns to the tank? Then if the pet gets aggro and the tank taunts, the tank has 20% more threat than before (because the pet had 10% more threat to pull and the tank got 10% more than that). Or maybe I just don't understand the threat system fully. The only problem is when the pet pulls and then dies when someone else is near the threat cap and gets aggro but then they shouldn't have been close to the threat cap in the first place.I don't use growl regardless though.

Jim says:Have you ever purposefully pulled too much just to see how well your group can handle the pressure? I used to do that all the time just to test the team. It's really the only way to play these games and have fun.

Sixcorners chimes in:Ok, so bad things happen if you forget some enemies can fear or something like that but doing instances day in and day out is boring! When I was playing back in BC days, if I was in a group that can handle a run easily (or sometimes even if I wasn't) I would do things that might be considered dangerous, within reason of course, because I've just been through those places too many times.

Those are fair points, and I certainly enjoy playing a game with an added challenge -- especially if the added challenges are built in, like the heroic dungeon achievements. However, I think you have to recognize that when you are playing with other players, these added challenges must be done with the consent of your entire team.

Because frankly, a lot of people don't care, nor should they be forced to care, about whether you are stretching your limits or not. They want their badges. And to me, what's satisfying is pushing through a dungeon at a good pace with solid teamwork and not dying. If you cause a team wipe because you wanted to push your limits by, for instance, waiting for the tank to get down to almost zero health before you heal him (that also happened to me!) then that doesn't make you a more skilled healer, it makes you a reckless healer who turns an easy run into a wipe. You probably cause a bunch of people to quit the group or kick you, and in the long run that just makes it take longer and be more boring.

Trust is a difficult commodity to come by in random groups. I don't trust my randomly assigned healer to carry us through with ease just because he brags about his past history, and I don't trust my overpowered DPS to not get killed by the adds he pulled. If my fiancee was healing me that would be a different story, because I already know she's awesome.

So if you want to do something that pushes your limits, I'd say you ought to get a guild group together and explain what you're doing first, then test your limits with their cooperation. When I'm a healer I sometimes go ahead and do melee damage or cast enough spells to get my mana down below 75%, but I know that more than that would make me a danger to everyone else.

Sixcorners also said:Also, I always wondered about pets and growl.. Doesn't it only serve to be neutral to the team if the pet pulls aggro, dies, and then aggro returns to the tank? Then if the pet gets aggro and the tank taunts, the tank has 20% more threat than before (because the pet had 10% more threat to pull and the tank got 10% more than that). Or maybe I just don't understand the threat system fully. The only problem is when the pet pulls and then dies when someone else is near the threat cap and gets aggro but then they shouldn't have been close to the threat cap in the first place.

You're also missing the fact that warriors and bears rely on the monsters hitting them so they can generate more rage. Once you lose the adds, it contributes to a vicious cycle where you can't build rage, so you can't produce enough threat, so you lose more mobs, so you have more rage problems.

Also, pulling aggro is much more difficult at a distance than it is from close up. For instance, paladins generate a lot of threat passively by making mobs stand in their Consecrated ground. Death knights use Death & Decay, and their other threat generator is Pestilence, which spreads diseases only to targets within a very short range. Etc.

Taunt can be a short term solution, but it only gives you a very small threat lead over the next guy in your group. If the mob is far away then you will probably lose it again before it reaches your position.

I mostly became reckless during runs because badge runs became so tedious. The second my behavior started to affect the group negatively in any way, I quickly apologized and started following all of the rules again. I don't think these people are trying to play a game with themselves, just that they are.. well.. feeling their brain start to atrophy because of the mind-numbingly tedious interaction with the same three buttons.. : \ I guess I'm just reiterating myself.. err.. but what I found myself doing constantly was trying to 'optimize' certain aspects of the game for least tediousness. Of course that was kind of futile because the portions of the second I saved by pulling the almost dead mob off the tank to have it die along the way, are counteracted by the wipe and run back because I misdirected before everyone was ready or multi-shotted the sheep. Regardless, you don't have to give these people any special consideration that you wouldn't normally give to someone else who dislikes badge runs and isn't paying full attention. If their behavior causes a problem let them apologize and stop said behavior. If they don't do that then they are at fault. Did 'the lunatic' go on about pulling faster after the wipe? Actually.. it might be the case that he felt justified because the wipe would not have happened without the fear, which is easy to overlook..

The only time that I think growl could have a positive impact is if it threat generation was only happening on a limited number of targets over a long period of time where 20% would be very significant. It seems possible that the tank could be put 10% in front of the pet's threat which would be 10% in front of the tank if the pet pulled aggro. I'm not sure however that the taunt abilities still function by setting the taunter at 110% of the mob's target. It doesn't make since to do that during normal pulls because it only confounds the situation, so this really didn't have much to do with the growl situation in your post. I was thinking that the pet wouldn't interrupt the tanks ability to get rage because the pet would die if the tank wasn't able to taunt and get the threat boost, then the mob would just be back on the tank, no problems with ranged aggro or rage generation (although now that ranged/healers have to be at 130% threat to pull, it is more likely that they will actually be above 100% threat, so that would be a problem).Then again a tank needs to save the taunt CD, and it doesn't seem that a pet could ever actually get aggro in a long fight anyway. This whole process would be poor compared to just having the pet DPS like normal. Anyway, shouldn't it be possible for several tanks to chain-taunt and gain treat exponentially?Nvm.. Guess taunting has diminishing returns now.

" Actually.. it might be the case that he felt justified because the wipe would not have happened without the fear, which is easy to overlook.."So.. He might have wanted to continue on that path after fear was less of a factor.. It's not like he continued to want big pulls even though there was still the threat of fear.. right?

I think one way I avoid boredom as a healer is to contribute to the DPS as much as possible. Assessing the situation and switching roles when necessary is interesting to me, even though I still stay way, way near the bottom of the meter. And for the DPS, I think it's generally okay to open fire and not mitigate your aggro, as long as you're sensitive to the group and verify that it's not a hazard. If your gear keeps you alive and you only peel off one enemy at a time it's not an issue. If your healer is good enough to keep you alive he might actually appreciate it, and if your tank puts out enough threat then it may not be a concern. But for the most part, the people I've seen who think they're badasses, do NOT perform well when things get messy.

What ticks me off the most is when somebody throws a fit over their own death which they effectively caused. If you're going to take risks, then YOU should bear most of the consequences of that risk. That's why I often won't rescue a DPS from his own pulls, whether it's by taunting off him or healing him. It's much less risky to resurrect a risk-prone player than to waste mana and personal stress trying to keep him alive when he's not helping himself stay alive.

Actually.. it might be the case that he felt justified because the wipe would not have happened without the fear, which is easy to overlook..

It might. But again, if you choose to engage in risky behavior and something unexpected happens that wipes the group, that's still your fault. If you hadn't been taking those risks, the surprise would have been easier to handle.

Regarding tanks: One thing you should realize is that tanks don't like to taunt if they can avoid it. Taunt is a last resort, which means that all the normal ways of building threat have failed. A good tank will build up threat through a combination of AOE threat (consecration for paladins, shouts and slams for warriors, etc), single focus on the main DPS target, and switching targets to pick up more threat on the next one.

Tanks like to be WAY ahead of the DPS on threat whenever possible, so it's bothersome to have a wolf staying at 90% of my threat level because he's growling for no good reason. It means I can't spend as much mana (or as many cooldown periods) doing AOE or switching targets.

Also, in many cases, if the DPS doesn't watch his own threat then it may actually slow the run down. If I'm confident that I have a solid threat on everything, and the healer has things under control, then I may go ahead and run ahead to the next pull, making the mobs follow me so we can keep moving. If I have someone regularly stealing aggro, or too many DPS divided among different targets, I can't do that because I know I might lose a few of them and cause a wipe that way.

I think we are in agreement then. I don't like it when people throw fits over any kind of non-wipe death (and most of the time, loot) either. It's just that people do sometimes choose to use a less secure method of clearing an instance. If that doesn't work they should accept responsibility for it and revert back to using a safer method. Though, yelling out 'BORED' isn't the best way to go about asking to do that. I don't know if it is still the case but a majority of mobs don't have added things that make multiple pulls impossible, like fear. So while it was that healers fault for wanting to use that method, it was reasonable to assume that it was safe to use that method before finding out about the fear, I think. Any chance 'the lunatic' was able to use tremor totems or fear ward?

I guess since the aim is to not use Taunt, Growl couldn't possibly be helpful, even if pets were good at getting aggro during long fights. During short fights a 20% aggro gain isn't helpful or worth the added hassle/taunt cooldown.

I play as a icecrown-25 level geared feral druid tank and a icecrown level ret paladin (with a decent holy offspec), and I would like to add another anecdote to the list of bad players.

Anecdote 4: the completely incompetent player.I've seen a few of these players, but one particular example stands out above all others. I was in a Halls of Stone run on my druid-tank, and as often happens, I was topping the damage meters because of my high gear-level and experience. We got to the first boss encounter alright, a little slow as the dps wasn't very good. I asked this hunter why he was only pulling 500dps, and then I inspected his gear. He was nearly wearing full triumph emblem gear and heroic gear, but a lot of it was either strength gear, or was gemmed with strength. I asked him about the Bloodshed band that he was wearing, and he professed that he was wearing it... wait for it..."For the crit"...

A hunter that does 500dps because he uses volley for single target dps and wears strength items..

That hunter that you mentioned was incredibly bad, I agree. Maybe I'm an incurable optimist, but I'm thinking a guy like that could easily be corrected by explaining the relative utility of strength vs. agility for his class. Although actually, I'm surprised that any play CAN manage to run only 500 dps gear with triumph chain items. Seems to me like you'd stack enough agility and hit writing just from the hunter gear that is actually available, that you could pull better dps than that even if all your other gear was gray junk. Of course, the pet probably would have contributed a good chunk of the missing dps also.

In any case, my point in the post is kind of along the lines that you were still able to make it through the dungeon, albeit with difficulty. Certainly if the rest of your dps was similarly low then he wasn't the only problem teammate, and three bad DPS together can definitely ruin a run, but it sounds like that wasn't entirely the case here.

What I'm saying is that my main concern is teammates who are doing something to directly threaten the safety of the group on a regular basis. Things like pulling monsters when the healer or tank isn't ready. I guess the question I ask myself here is: "Would we be better off if he were not here at all?" In the case of an underperforming but cautious dps, my answer is no. He isn't helping all that much, but if he were to disappear and not be replaced, your DPS would still go down a chunk. Therefore, it's not worth cursing players out and threatening them with dire consequences, because unless there's a good reason to kick them immediately, it's only going to make everyone miserable.